Commentary Example: “Hanging Fire” by Audre Lorde
The poem “Hanging Fire” by Audre Lorde is written from the likely perspective of a fourteen-year-old African-American girl. The poem is made up of three stanzas and is free verse. The final two lines of the first stanza “and momma’s in the bedroom/ with the door closed.” are repeated in the following stanzas. The poem is about the girl’s concerns about many things ranging from her crush at school, to her acne, to the size of her room, and constant thoughts on death. Each stanza ends, however, with a couplet describing the girl’s mother as being locked away in her room and the girls feeling shut away from her mother.
The first stanza begins with the girl stating her age: “I am fourteen”. This gives the reader some idea of the mindset and perspective of the girl. She has a crush on a boy at school: “the boy I cannot live without/ still sucks his thumb/ in secret”. The girl is aware of her conflicting condition: the boy is very attractive to her and yet he is very immature. She also mentions problems familiar to any teen, acne and dry skin: “…my skin has betrayed me” and “…my knees are/ always so ashy”. With this familiarity comes a typical sense of teenage self-consciousness about one’s physical appearance. She also gets very dramatic about death and then tells us that her mother is in her bedroom with the door closed.
The reader notices that the final two lines of the second stanza are repeated from the last two lines of the first stanza. Stanza two contains some similar teenage emotional stuff. For example, “my room is too small for me”. But, the repetition of the couplet about the mother indicates that the mother’s absence is of tremendous importance to the speaker and even more so than the reappearance of the speaker’s fascination with death.
With the third stanza we see the two lines about the mother repeated again. But, the stanza begins with the line “Nobody even stops to think”. Perhaps this is suggesting the speaker’s feeling of being ignored by her mother and by other adults. Again, there are the usual teenage anxieties: “I should have been on Math Team” or “Why do I have to be/ the one/ wearing braces”. But, the fixation on death appears again in lines 9 and 10 and the two lines about the mother also appear again. It may be that the first nine or ten lines contain things the girl wishes to tell the mother, but, because of her mother’s isolation, she cannot. Ultimately, the girl may feel alienated and neglected.
It should be noted that there are only three examples of punctuation in this poem: three periods. Each stanza is a run-on sentence containing a mash-up of fear and anxiety that ends, finally, with the couplet about the mother and a period. There are no examples of figurative language after the title, “Hanging Fire”, which contains a metaphor. Everything comes back to the mother and the absence that the speaker feels but does not articulate as completely as the concerns about acne or boys or her bedroom. Perhaps it is too painful to do so and she leaves it to the reader to determine what the closed door signifies. We can only guess what the mother is doing in her room but clearly she means to isolate herself from her daughter. The painful preoccupation with the mother hangs there, as indicated by the title, and is a persistent problem for the speaker and one she is powerless against.
Hanging Fire – Audre Lorde
I am fourteen
and my skin has betrayed me
the boy I cannot live without
still sucks his thumb
in secret
how come my knees are
always so ashy
what if I die
before morning
and momma's in the bedroom
with the door closed.
I have to learn how to dance
in time for the next party
my room is too small for me
suppose I die before graduation
they will sing sad melodies
but finally
tell the truth about me
There is nothing I want to do
and too much
that has to be done
and momma's in the bedroom
with the door closed.
Nobody even stops to think
about my side of it
I should have been on Math Team
my marks were better than his
why do I have to be
the one
wearing braces
I have nothing to wear tomorrow
will I live long enough
to grow up
and momma's in the bedroom
with the door closed.